Chinese hand in Manipur&NE India

[Guest guest]

indicjournalists, Rajeev Srinivasan

<rajeev.srinivasan@g...> wrote:

August 26th

 

This is the first time I have heard such allegations of the

involvement of the Chinese in Manipur, but it does not surprise me.

Worth reading. Lebensraum is the name of the game for the Chinese, as

it was for the Germans.

 

 

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Sharma Sanjeev

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:38:00 +0100

Chinese hand in Manipur

"Rajeev.srinivasan@g..." <rajeev.srinivasan@g...>

 

Dear Rajeev

 

Here is a link for you to ponder and expose through your columns which

thankfully have more readership in rediff etc than this news site.

 

http://www.indiareacts.com/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=961

 

thanks

Sanjeev

 

The Chinese hand

At last we know who has roadmapped the Manipur agitation.

 

25 August 2004: The last piece in the Manipur puzzle has been found,

the Chinese hand in the recent uprising in the state. While it was

widely assumed that Thangjam Manorama's rape and murder allegedly by

Assam Rifles men set off the statewide agitation for withdrawal of

the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the provocation runs deeper, as

separately discovered by the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and

Analysis Wing, and the Military Intelligence Directorate. Their

individual reports have been sent to the prime minister's office, and

discussed by the cabinet committee on political affairs, and further

details are awaited before the matter can be taken up by the cabinet

committee on security.

 

>From the first, the security and intelligence agencies were convinced

there was more to the Manipur agitation than the tragic Manorama rape

incident, which obviously lit the fire. The Chinese hand was

suspected, but not explored, perhaps because since after

P.V.Narasimha Rao visited China in September 1993, the Chinese

backing to various North-Eastern insurgent groups, but especially the

NSCN, ceased, which subsequently enabled the government to open a

dialogue with the NSCN factions. Through the late Nineties and

thereafter, China built one axis of opposing India, proliferating to

Pakistan and selling missiles and technology via third parties like

North Korea, while continuing with its encirclement policy on the

other axis using countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh. Arming the

insurgents was thought small beer, in comparison.

 

Even when China commenced pressuring Nepal to invite the PLA to stamp

down Maoist insurgency, reported by this magazine in early July,

preparing thereby to open a third axis against India, the agencies

were not alerted to its possible subversive activities in the North

East. It had somehow become an article of faith on the Indian side

that China would stay away from sponsoring insurgency there, though

what that touching faith was based on nobody knows. Subsequently, we

reported that China was implementing a Communist-Party resolution in

a swathe of North-East territories, with the aim to lay claim on them

after 2010, and the first step in that direction was encouraging

border trade with the North-Eastern states, followed by increasing

Chinese tourism in these states, and simultaneously funding the

Chinese Indian community to buy prime properties in the region

(Commentary, "New game," 16 August 2004)

 

In a bigger picture of Chinese subversion in the North East, all this

would fit, but the Manipur agitation still remained curiously

unfitted, and therefore unexplained. When the agitation grew

uncontrollable was when perhaps the agencies decided to investigate

the deeper causes, and came upon the first of the evidence linking

China to it. Raids on Manipur university professors and at least

seven students unearthed details of telephone calls made to Hong Kong

and visits to meet Chinese MID or military-intelligence department

agents.

 

During questioning, one of the professors broke down and confessed to

visiting Hong Kong nine times in the past six months. A proposal was

recovered in the raid for Chinese mediation of the Manipur issue. A

further trail led to five Manipuri insurgent leaders who had regular

meetings with MID agents based in Myanmar, who were presumably

roadmapping the agitation. Separately, RAW, the IB, and military

intelligence came to common conclusions about the Chinese hand in the

Manipur agitation, but not to compromise operations, officials are

not disclosing names or details.

 

Reports of the Chinese hand have been available with government for

at least ten days, and possibly two weeks, but it has been stymied

for a response. While the issue has been discussed in the CCPA, the

government is chary of taking it up to the CCS, a more select body

than the CCPA, with an unwritten mandate to act on issues brought

before it, and not just deliberate and forget. Officials say the

government has sought more details, and the agencies are complying,

but there is also a feeling that the government is unwilling to face

the truth.

 

Every government has its particular level of security consciousness,

but this government's low level has left agencies dissatisfied,

disoriented, and cold. "Prime minister Manmohan Singh," said a top

intelligence official, "does not regularly interact with the

agencies, and there is little to suggest that he acts on our findings

or recommendations. Unfortunately, we cannot varnish the truth to

someone's liking. This is not about politics or oneupmanship. We

state things as they are, and the risk is yours if you don't act."

 

In fairness to the UPA, it is only a hundred days old, put against

the risk of questioning the basis of our hard-got friendship with

China. China is not a pipsqueak but the most proactive big power

after the United States, leagues ahead of united Europe or Russia,

and an emerging power like India has to proceed with abundant action

against it, if such be policy. But the agencies complain that there

is no policy on China, not outside the agenda of resolving the border

issue, and while we play ball, they move the goalposts to their

advantage.

 

On the causes of the recent threatened flooding of Himachal Pradesh,

for example, the government has a good idea, that indiscriminate rock

blasting for railways and roads in the ecologically fragile Tibetan

plateau produced landslides and the dangerous artificial Pareechu

lake on the Sutlej. With the flood threat receded, it is extremely

unlikely that India will interrogate the Chinese on the causes, even

though there may a design in it to flood northern India in future and

paralyse the political economy. Long-term Chinese plans for

largescale Chinese settlements in the North East, preparatory to some

sort of secession, have not received due attention or caused

particular concern, although the agencies have dutifully monitored

the Chinese Indian community since especially the 1962 war.

 

In this sorry background, the agencies expect little or no action on

their current intelligence about the Chinese hand in Manipur. While

it is legitimate for the government to seek more evidence of this,

the past tells the agencies to keep expectations low. In the midst of

A.B.Vajpayee's much-published trip to China last June, the PLA

grabbed two IB officers on a routine inspection tour of Arunachal

Pradesh alongwith support staff of SSB jawans. Until this magazine

and the newspapers exposed it, the government hoped to get the

intelligence officers off quietly, and paper over the incident. "One

reason to leak the Chinese hand in Manipur is so the government

cannot cover up," confessed an agency official frankly. "The various

threats from China make a picture, and it is downright irresponsible

to go about as though the picture does not exist."

 

The reaction to the Chinese subversion in Manipur cannot be knee

jerk, and at least this expose should put the Chinese on the

defensive. The Indian response has to be calculated and calibrated,

and there must be some show of public concern to the evidence of the

foreign hand in Manipur. Not showing even the most minimal concern

now, not acting at all, would encourage China to worser subversion

and maximum damage. The Chinese hand in the Manipur agitation is of a

different order of its previous support to the Nagas, because the

first involves some intellectual conversion to China's present

ideology of socialism with Chinese characteristics. As agency

officials say, the arrested Manipur professors and their other

intellectual sympathisers were impressed by the Chinese model of

development. This should cause pain to a political-economist like

Manmohan Singh about the North East and particularly Manipur's

neglect.

 

Too much has gone wrong in the North East for any inimical foreign

power not to take advantage, but simultaneously, we have to

dramatically reassess our relations with China. In the centre of our

relationship build-up or build-down with China cannot be the border

issue, because it horribly limits our responses, and intimates our

weakness, but our vision of our own future, because that will give

reality and muscularity to our responses. Threatened by India's

future rivalry, China threatens us now, and we should respond in

kind.